Avenir
Designing equal job opportunities for newcomers to Canada
Overview
🏆 Western Founders Network Designathon Winner
Avenir is an all-in-one career helper app that empowers immigrants and refugees to navigate the Canadian job market.
Through features like AI resume review, mentorship matching, and job translation, Avenir helps newcomers overcome cultural and language barriers in employment.
Role
UX Designer
Tools
Figma
Team
4 UX Designers
Timeline
48 hours, February 2023
Context
A growing population, but widening opportunity gaps
Immigrants and refugees struggle with job searching in a new country as a result of cultural differences in professional standards and lack of community and professional connections.
23% of the Canadian population consisted of immigrants.
It’s great that this number is high, but the current system doesn’t adequately support the people coming in.
36% of new immigrants and refugees live in poverty as a result of this system.
Systemic barriers hinder newcomers’ ability to fully participate in the workforce.
Canada aimed to welcome 465,000 new permanent residents by 2023.
This only increases the difficulty for these residents to search for jobs. The demand for accessible, inclusive job-search tools has never been greater.
Scope of the challenge
With the short amount of time we had, our solution focused more on providing job-search support rather than broader settlement. We prioritized tools that would offer clarity, confidence, and community throughout the employment process.
Our goal: Help job seekers understand role expectations, strengthen applications, and have easy access to support without feeling overwhelmed
Problem
Starting over shouldn't mean starting alone
Newcomers face significant barriers when entering the Canadian job market. Cultural differences in workplace expectations, limited access to mentorship, and a lack of professional networks make it difficult to secure meaningful employment. Without accessible guidance or community support, many struggle to adapt their skills to a new environment and achieve career stability.
With the context in mind, we asked…
How might we help new canadians in their professional journeys and ensure that job-searching is equal for everybody living in Canada regardless of their backgrounds?
Solution
Introducing
An all-in-one career helper app that assists newcomers throughout the job search process by consolidating tools that are typically separated across multiple platforms.
Import job postings
Turn everyday moments into creative expression by sketching directly on photos from your surroundings.
Parse and translate job descriptions
Automatically translate job postings and highlight key requirements to ensure understanding.
Mentorship support
Connect with professionals in your field for one-on-one guidance and advice.
Resume review
Receive detailed AI feedback on structure, clarity, and ATS compliance.
Prototype
Dive into Avenir
Interact with the prototype below!
Design process
How did Avenir come to life?
Empathize — Group interview
Understanding the immigrant experience
Our group mostly comprised of immigrants or children to immigrant parents who have experienced the difficulty in job-seeking, so we considered what helped us when going through this process and what would've been nice to have. With the limited time we had, we performed an internal group interview to share our thoughts and what we struggled with in the past in relation to job-seeking.
Thoughts on the current job search process:
"Using a resume parser always helps a lot to see if my resume follows specific guidelines and conveys the skills I'm trying to emphasize to employers well."
"I think when I first started applying for jobs, it would've been nice to have more guidance or an easily accessible mentor."
Key Takeaways
1
Job searching feel overwhelming without concentrated support.
2
Guidance and mentorship are valuable but aren't easily accessible.
3
Existing tools lack localization for newcomers.
These takeaways shaped the goals for our solution.
Define — Goals
What impact do we want Avenir to create?
From our interviews and personal experiences, we learned that newcomers lack clarity, guidance, and connections. We designed our solution to bridge these gaps by providing tools that build confidence throughout the job-search journey and reduce confusion.
Our goals were to:
Make job-seeking support accessible
Provide newcomers with clear resources to help them navigate applications with confidence.
Turn overwhelming processes into achievable steps
Break the process into small actions so users can make steady progress without feeling lost
Strengthen professional community
Connect newcomers with peers and professional who understand their experiences
Define — User personas
Meet Sophia and Gonzalez, two individuals representing the realities of starting over in a new country
To ground our decisions in empathy, we created two personas reflecting different newcomer realities and time pressures. Their pain points directly shaped how we mapped out features.
Sophia
Unemployed New Grad, Graduated from Kyriv National University
Goals & Motivations
Adapt to Canadian professional standards
Pain Points
Ukraine education is often overlooked
Occupational English is challenging to learn
No referral network
Difficulty immersing into Canadian work culture
How Avenir helps Sophia
Access to mentorship helps reduce isolation and uncertainty in a new work culture
Helps translate her international education into recognized resume standards in Canada
Gonzalez
Current Psychology Student @ UBC
Goals & Motivations
Build connections with employers and those in the professional field to find meaningful work
Pain Points
Occupational language barrier
Risk of being underpaid
Difficulty with the Canadian work culture
How Avenir helps Gonzalez
Translating job postings helps break down professional and occupational language so that he can confidently evaluate job opportunities
Mentorship and insight offerings helps him navigate Canadian workplace expectations and career pathways
Define — Feature brainstorming
Brainstorming features to align user pain points with practical solutions
Using our personas, we identified key features to directly address the challenges uncovered, then prioritized them based on impact and feasibility within a 48 hour sprint.
Features to avoid
This was excluded as it added complexity and fell outside the scope of a sprint.
Direct application to jobs from our site
Out of scope for the sprint and Avenir focuses on supporting the job-search process rather than replacing existing platforms.
Nice to have
These features aligned with user needs but were not essential for the core experience.
Mentor background matching
Helps users connect with mentors who share similar cultural or professional experiences.
Resume calculation match with job postings
Helps users quickly assess how well their resumes aligns with a posting.
Must-have features
These features were core to solving the main user pain points revealed during research.
Resume features
Upload, parse, and receive feedback on resume to navigate Canadian resume standards.
Mentorship
Book mentors and view recommendations, supports users who lack professional networks.
Job posting links integrated
Allows users to store postings and understand requirements even with language barriers.
Machine learning assistance
Highlights key information to reduce cognitive load while job searching.
Develop — Competitive analysis
Analyzing competitors to uncover gaps in accessibility and user support
We analyzed platforms such as ADPList, Google Translate, and Resume Worded to evaluate what worked and what didn’t.
Key Insights
ADPList
Provides mentorship but lacks job-specific guidance.
Google Translate
Handles language translation, but not professional nuance.
Resume Worded
Provides resume feedback but doesn't help users understand job postings.
No tool integrates all three needs into a single system, which revealed a clear opportunity:
Newcomers need a tailored system that integrates their strengths (mentorship, translation, resume feedback) into one unified experience.
Develop — User flows
Mapping user flows to visualize key decision points and navigation paths
We mapped out the user flow to ensure that every tool, from mentorship to translation, was accessible from a single dashboard.
Reducing cognitive load and guiding personas
In the flow design, we prioritized a simple structure to reduce cognitive load and maintain consistent guidance from start to finish. We wanted to reduce the overwhelming nature of job searching by including all the essential tools in a single, accessible structure.
Pain point: Feeling overwhelmed navigating new job platforms and Canadian requirements.
Design solution: We included a single dashboard that anchors the whole experience. From here, users can perform key tasks directly without bouncing between multiple tools.
Result: This reduces cognitive load and newcomers have a clearer starting point.
Pain point: Struggling with language barriers and understanding job postings.
Design solution: The job parsing flow converts long job descriptions into structured sections with the option to translate.
Result: Users can quickly understand opportunities without feeling lost, empowering them to make decisions confidently even when English terms are unfamiliar.
Pain point: Lack of accessible mentorship and guidance in navigating an unfamiliar job market
Design solution: The mentorship flow is simple, users can book, view upcoming sessions and recommend mentors all in one screen.
Result: Newcomers like Sophia and Gonzalez receive efficient support without navigating a complex system.
Develop — Lofis
Creating low-fidelity wireframes to establish structure and core interactions
I led the low-fidelity wireframing process for both web and mobile, focusing on content hierarchy and simple, structured navigation.
The goal was to create a dashboard where users could view saved jobs, mentorship bookings, and resume feedback all in one place.
How early design decisions addressed newcomer needs
Needs
What was solved?
Benefit
Sophia: Needs mentorship to understand Canadian workplace norm
Mentor screen with upcoming appointment and recommended mentors related to field.
Provides immediate access to support and guidance, reduces the feeling of navigating the job market alone.
Gonzalez: Need for clearer occupational language and an easier way to understand jargon
Job posting parse with translation toggle and structured sections.
Alleviates intimidation and confusion, helps understand key information without external tools.
Both: Need a central hub to track progress and reduce the chaos of job searching
Unified dashboard showing saved jobs, upcoming mentor sessions, resume status, and intuitive navigation.
Encourages curiosity and provides visual inspiration for users who struggle with brainstorming when burnt out.
Develop — Hifis
Refining visuals and interactions to bring the final experience to life
With our style guide finalized and flows mapped out, we validated the structure through rapid team reviews. We checked each with our personas' pain points and goals. If a step didn't truly support users during the job search, it was revised or removed. We refined the visual design and interactions for both desktop and mobile experiences, maintaining consistency through our shared style guide.
Mobile
Web
Deliver — Results
Empowering newcomers through inclusive design
After a long straight 12+ hours of work, we were given the opportunity to present our pitch to a panel of judges consisting of professional product designers in the field. During the finals ceremony, we presented our pitch live to all participants and final round judges. And I'm proud to say that...
My team won first place! 🥇
This opportunity was such a great experience for me! As one of my first product design sprints, I learned a lot, especially when it comes to the design process and the amount of work that goes into designing a solution.
What I learned
Key takeaways
Strong style guides create efficient collaboration
By creating a style guide, it made collaborating on the project way easier and helped all of us to be on the same page when it came to designing Avenir. Overall, we worked more efficiently and finished our solution in the tight deadline
Research and competitive analysis prevent feature bloat
Competitive analysis was a key step in creating our final solution. It helped us to identify how we can make a more accessible and effective product with already existing features in other platforms, and improve on any pain points that these platforms have.
Next steps
Expanding outside Canada and to other countries
Currently, Avenir is only limited to those in Canada. It would be nice to add features to make it regional and help newcomers to other countries.
Good design bridges cultures. Great design builds belonging.
Thanks for checking out this case study! If you have any questions or want to know more, don't hesitate to contact me. While you're still here, please feel free to check out my other work or learn more about me. :)
Avenir
Designing equal job opportunities for newcomers to Canada
Overview
🏆 Western Founders Network Designathon Winner
Avenir is an all-in-one career helper app that empowers immigrants and refugees to navigate the Canadian job market.
Through features like AI resume review, mentorship matching, and job translation, Avenir helps newcomers overcome cultural and language barriers in employment.
Role
UX Designer
Tools
Figma
Team
4 UX Designers
Timeline
48 hours, February 2023
Context
A growing population, but widening opportunity gaps
Immigrants and refugees struggle with job searching in a new country as a result of cultural differences in professional standards and lack of community and professional connections.
23% of the Canadian population consisted of immigrants.
It’s great that this number is high, but the current system doesn’t adequately support the people coming in.
36% of new immigrants and refugees live in poverty as a result of this system.
Systemic barriers hinder newcomers’ ability to fully participate in the workforce.
Canada aimed to welcome 465,000 new permanent residents by 2023.
This only increases the difficulty for these residents to search for jobs. The demand for accessible, inclusive job-search tools has never been greater.
Scope of the challenge
With the short amount of time we had, our solution focused more on providing job-search support rather than broader settlement. We prioritized tools that would offer clarity, confidence, and community throughout the employment process.
Our goal: Help job seekers understand role expectations, strengthen applications, and have easy access to support without feeling overwhelmed
Problem
Starting over shouldn't mean starting alone
Newcomers face significant barriers when entering the Canadian job market. Cultural differences in workplace expectations, limited access to mentorship, and a lack of professional networks make it difficult to secure meaningful employment. Without accessible guidance or community support, many struggle to adapt their skills to a new environment and achieve career stability.
With the context in mind, we asked…
How might we help new canadians in their professional journeys and ensure that job-searching is equal for everybody living in Canada regardless of their backgrounds?
Solution
Introducing
An all-in-one career helper app that assists newcomers throughout the job search process by consolidating tools that are typically separated across multiple platforms.
Import job postings
Turn everyday moments into creative expression by sketching directly on photos from your surroundings.
Parse and translate job descriptions
Automatically translate job postings and highlight key requirements to ensure understanding.
Mentorship support
Connect with professionals in your field for one-on-one guidance and advice.
Resume review
Receive detailed AI feedback on structure, clarity, and ATS compliance.
Prototype
Dive into Avenir
Interact with the prototype below!
Design process
How did Avenir come to life?
Empathize — Group interview
Understanding the immigrant experience
Our group mostly comprised of immigrants or children to immigrant parents who have experienced the difficulty in job-seeking, so we considered what helped us when going through this process and what would've been nice to have. With the limited time we had, we performed an internal group interview to share our thoughts and what we struggled with in the past in relation to job-seeking.
Thoughts on the current job search process:
"Using a resume parser always helps a lot to see if my resume follows specific guidelines and conveys the skills I'm trying to emphasize to employers well."
"I think when I first started applying for jobs, it would've been nice to have more guidance or an easily accessible mentor."
Key Takeaways
1
Job searching feel overwhelming without concentrated support.
2
Guidance and mentorship are valuable but aren't easily accessible.
3
Existing tools lack localization for newcomers.
These takeaways shaped the goals for our solution.
Define — Goals
What impact do we want Avenir to create?
From our interviews and personal experiences, we learned that newcomers lack clarity, guidance, and connections. We designed our solution to bridge these gaps by providing tools that build confidence throughout the job-search journey and reduce confusion.
Our goals were to:
Make job-seeking support accessible
Provide newcomers with clear resources to help them navigate applications with confidence.
Turn overwhelming processes into achievable steps
Break the process into small actions so users can make steady progress without feeling lost
Strengthen professional community
Connect newcomers with peers and professional who understand their experiences
Define — User personas
Meet Sophia and Gonzalez, two individuals representing the realities of starting over in a new country
To ground our decisions in empathy, we created two personas reflecting different newcomer realities and time pressures. Their pain points directly shaped how we mapped out features.
Sophia
Unemployed New Grad, Graduated from Kyriv National University
Goals & Motivations
Adapt to Canadian professional standards
Pain Points
Ukraine education is often overlooked
Occupational English is challenging to learn
No referral network
Difficulty immersing into Canadian work culture
How Avenir helps Sophia
Access to mentorship helps reduce isolation and uncertainty in a new work culture
Helps translate her international education into recognized resume standards in Canada
Gonzalez
Current Psychology Student @ UBC
Goals & Motivations
Build connections with employers and those in the professional field to find meaningful work
Pain Points
Occupational language barrier
Risk of being underpaid
Difficulty with the Canadian work culture
How Avenir helps Gonzalez
Translating job postings helps break down professional and occupational language so that he can confidently evaluate job opportunities
Mentorship and insight offerings helps him navigate Canadian workplace expectations and career pathways
Define — Feature brainstorming
Brainstorming features to align user pain points with practical solutions
Using our personas, we identified key features to directly address the challenges uncovered, then prioritized them based on impact and feasibility within a 48 hour sprint.
Features to avoid
This was excluded as it added complexity and fell outside the scope of a sprint.
Direct application to jobs from our site
Out of scope for the sprint and Avenir focuses on supporting the job-search process rather than replacing existing platforms.
Nice to have
These features aligned with user needs but were not essential for the core experience.
Mentor background matching
Helps users connect with mentors who share similar cultural or professional experiences.
Resume calculation match with job postings
Helps users quickly assess how well their resumes aligns with a posting.
Must-have features
These features were core to solving the main user pain points revealed during research.
Resume features
Upload, parse, and receive feedback on resume to navigate Canadian resume standards.
Mentorship
Book mentors and view recommendations, supports users who lack professional networks.
Job posting links integrated
Allows users to store postings and understand requirements even with language barriers.
Machine learning assistance
Highlights key information to reduce cognitive load while job searching.
Develop — Competitive analysis
Analyzing competitors to uncover gaps in accessibility and user support
We analyzed platforms such as ADPList, Google Translate, and Resume Worded to evaluate what worked and what didn’t.
Key Insights
ADPList
Provides mentorship but lacks job-specific guidance.
Google Translate
Handles language translation, but not professional nuance.
Resume Worded
Provides resume feedback but doesn't help users understand job postings.
No tool integrates all three needs into a single system, which revealed a clear opportunity:
Newcomers need a tailored system that integrates their strengths (mentorship, translation, resume feedback) into one unified experience.
Develop — User flows
Mapping user flows to visualize key decision points and navigation paths
We mapped out the user flow to ensure that every tool, from mentorship to translation, was accessible from a single dashboard.
Reducing cognitive load and guiding personas
In the flow design, we prioritized a simple structure to reduce cognitive load and maintain consistent guidance from start to finish. We wanted to reduce the overwhelming nature of job searching by including all the essential tools in a single, accessible structure.
Pain point: Feeling overwhelmed navigating new job platforms and Canadian requirements.
Design solution: We included a single dashboard that anchors the whole experience. From here, users can perform key tasks directly without bouncing between multiple tools.
Result: This reduces cognitive load and newcomers have a clearer starting point.
Pain point: Struggling with language barriers and understanding job postings.
Design solution: The job parsing flow converts long job descriptions into structured sections with the option to translate.
Result: Users can quickly understand opportunities without feeling lost, empowering them to make decisions confidently even when English terms are unfamiliar.
Pain point: Lack of accessible mentorship and guidance in navigating an unfamiliar job market
Design solution: The mentorship flow is simple, users can book, view upcoming sessions and recommend mentors all in one screen.
Result: Newcomers like Sophia and Gonzalez receive efficient support without navigating a complex system.
Develop — Lofis
Creating low-fidelity wireframes to establish structure and core interactions
I led the low-fidelity wireframing process for both web and mobile, focusing on content hierarchy and simple, structured navigation.
The goal was to create a dashboard where users could view saved jobs, mentorship bookings, and resume feedback all in one place.
How early design decisions addressed newcomer needs
Needs
What was solved?
Benefit
Sophia: Needs mentorship to understand Canadian workplace norm
Mentor screen with upcoming appointment and recommended mentors related to field.
Provides immediate access to support and guidance, reduces the feeling of navigating the job market alone.
Gonzalez: Need for clearer occupational language and an easier way to understand jargon
Job posting parse with translation toggle and structured sections.
Alleviates intimidation and confusion, helps understand key information without external tools.
Both: Need a central hub to track progress and reduce the chaos of job searching
Unified dashboard showing saved jobs, upcoming mentor sessions, resume status, and intuitive navigation.
Encourages curiosity and provides visual inspiration for users who struggle with brainstorming when burnt out.
Develop — Hifis
Refining visuals and interactions to bring the final experience to life
With our style guide finalized and flows mapped out, we validated the structure through rapid team reviews. We checked each with our personas' pain points and goals. If a step didn't truly support users during the job search, it was revised or removed. We refined the visual design and interactions for both desktop and mobile experiences, maintaining consistency through our shared style guide.
Mobile
Web
Deliver — Results
Empowering newcomers through inclusive design
After a long straight 12+ hours of work, we were given the opportunity to present our pitch to a panel of judges consisting of professional product designers in the field. During the finals ceremony, we presented our pitch live to all participants and final round judges. And I'm proud to say that...
My team won first place! 🥇
This opportunity was such a great experience for me! As one of my first product design sprints, I learned a lot, especially when it comes to the design process and the amount of work that goes into designing a solution.
What I learned
Key takeaways
Strong style guides create efficient collaboration
By creating a style guide, it made collaborating on the project way easier and helped all of us to be on the same page when it came to designing Avenir. Overall, we worked more efficiently and finished our solution in the tight deadline
Research and competitive analysis prevent feature bloat
Competitive analysis was a key step in creating our final solution. It helped us to identify how we can make a more accessible and effective product with already existing features in other platforms, and improve on any pain points that these platforms have.
Next steps
Expanding outside Canada and to other countries
Currently, Avenir is only limited to those in Canada. It would be nice to add features to make it regional and help newcomers to other countries.
Good design bridges cultures. Great design builds belonging.
Thanks for checking out this case study! If you have any questions or want to know more, don't hesitate to contact me. While you're still here, please feel free to check out my other work or learn more about me. :)
Avenir
Designing equal job opportunities for newcomers to Canada
Overview
🏆 Western Founders Network Designathon Winner
Avenir is an all-in-one career helper app that empowers immigrants and refugees to navigate the Canadian job market.
Through features like AI resume review, mentorship matching, and job translation, Avenir helps newcomers overcome cultural and language barriers in employment.
Role
UX Designer
Tools
Figma
Team
4 UX Designers
Timeline
48 hours, February 2023
Context
A growing population, but widening opportunity gaps
Immigrants and refugees struggle with job searching in a new country as a result of cultural differences in professional standards and lack of community and professional connections.
23% of the Canadian population consisted of immigrants.
It’s great that this number is high, but the current system doesn’t adequately support the people coming in.
36% of new immigrants and refugees live in poverty as a result of this system.
Systemic barriers hinder newcomers’ ability to fully participate in the workforce.
Canada aimed to welcome 465,000 new permanent residents by 2023.
This only increases the difficulty for these residents to search for jobs. The demand for accessible, inclusive job-search tools has never been greater.
Scope of the challenge
With the short amount of time we had, our solution focused more on providing job-search support rather than broader settlement. We prioritized tools that would offer clarity, confidence, and community throughout the employment process.
Our goal: Help job seekers understand role expectations, strengthen applications, and have easy access to support without feeling overwhelmed
Problem
Starting over shouldn't mean starting alone
Newcomers face significant barriers when entering the Canadian job market. Cultural differences in workplace expectations, limited access to mentorship, and a lack of professional networks make it difficult to secure meaningful employment. Without accessible guidance or community support, many struggle to adapt their skills to a new environment and achieve career stability.
With the context in mind, we asked…
How might we help new canadians in their professional journeys and ensure that job-searching is equal for everybody living in Canada regardless of their backgrounds?
Solution
Introducing
An all-in-one career helper app that assists newcomers throughout the job search process by consolidating tools that are typically separated across multiple platforms.
Import job postings
Turn everyday moments into creative expression by sketching directly on photos from your surroundings.
Parse and translate job descriptions
Automatically translate job postings and highlight key requirements to ensure understanding.
Mentorship support
Connect with professionals in your field for one-on-one guidance and advice.
Resume review
Receive detailed AI feedback on structure, clarity, and ATS compliance.
Prototype
Dive into Avenir
Interact with the prototype below!
Design process
How did Avenir come to life?
Empathize — Group interview
Understanding the immigrant experience
Our group mostly comprised of immigrants or children to immigrant parents who have experienced the difficulty in job-seeking, so we considered what helped us when going through this process and what would've been nice to have. With the limited time we had, we performed an internal group interview to share our thoughts and what we struggled with in the past in relation to job-seeking.
Thoughts on the current job search process:
"Using a resume parser always helps a lot to see if my resume follows specific guidelines and conveys the skills I'm trying to emphasize to employers well."
"I think when I first started applying for jobs, it would've been nice to have more guidance or an easily accessible mentor."
Key Takeaways
1
Job searching feel overwhelming without concentrated support.
2
Guidance and mentorship are valuable but aren't easily accessible.
3
Existing tools lack localization for newcomers.
These takeaways shaped the goals for our solution.
Define — Goals
What impact do we want Avenir to create?
From our interviews and personal experiences, we learned that newcomers lack clarity, guidance, and connections. We designed our solution to bridge these gaps by providing tools that build confidence throughout the job-search journey and reduce confusion.
Our goals were to:
Make job-seeking support accessible
Provide newcomers with clear resources to help them navigate applications with confidence.
Turn overwhelming processes into achievable steps
Break the process into small actions so users can make steady progress without feeling lost
Strengthen professional community
Connect newcomers with peers and professional who understand their experiences
Define — User personas
Meet Sophia and Gonzalez, two individuals representing the realities of starting over in a new country
To ground our decisions in empathy, we created two personas reflecting different newcomer realities and time pressures. Their pain points directly shaped how we mapped out features.
Sophia
Unemployed New Grad, Graduated from Kyriv National University
Goals & Motivations
Adapt to Canadian professional standards
Pain Points
Ukraine education is often overlooked
Occupational English is challenging to learn
No referral network
Difficulty immersing into Canadian work culture
How Avenir helps Sophia
Access to mentorship helps reduce isolation and uncertainty in a new work culture
Helps translate her international education into recognized resume standards in Canada
Gonzalez
Current Psychology Student @ UBC
Goals & Motivations
Build connections with employers and those in the professional field to find meaningful work
Pain Points
Occupational language barrier
Risk of being underpaid
Difficulty with the Canadian work culture
How Avenir helps Gonzalez
Translating job postings helps break down professional and occupational language so that he can confidently evaluate job opportunities
Mentorship and insight offerings helps him navigate Canadian workplace expectations and career pathways
Define — Feature brainstorming
Brainstorming features to align user pain points with practical solutions
Using our personas, we identified key features to directly address the challenges uncovered, then prioritized them based on impact and feasibility within a 48 hour sprint.
Features to avoid
This was excluded as it added complexity and fell outside the scope of a sprint.
Direct application to jobs from our site
Out of scope for the sprint and Avenir focuses on supporting the job-search process rather than replacing existing platforms.
Nice to have
These features aligned with user needs but were not essential for the core experience.
Mentor background matching
Helps users connect with mentors who share similar cultural or professional experiences.
Resume calculation match with job postings
Helps users quickly assess how well their resumes aligns with a posting.
Must-have features
These features were core to solving the main user pain points revealed during research.
Resume features
Upload, parse, and receive feedback on resume to navigate Canadian resume standards.
Mentorship
Book mentors and view recommendations, supports users who lack professional networks.
Job posting links integrated
Allows users to store postings and understand requirements even with language barriers.
Machine learning assistance
Highlights key information to reduce cognitive load while job searching.
Develop — Competitive analysis
Analyzing competitors to uncover gaps in accessibility and user support
We analyzed platforms such as ADPList, Google Translate, and Resume Worded to evaluate what worked and what didn’t.
Key Insights
ADPList
Provides mentorship but lacks job-specific guidance.
Google Translate
Handles language translation, but not professional nuance.
Resume Worded
Provides resume feedback but doesn't help users understand job postings.
No tool integrates all three needs into a single system, which revealed a clear opportunity:
Newcomers need a tailored system that integrates their strengths (mentorship, translation, resume feedback) into one unified experience.
Develop — User flows
Mapping user flows to visualize key decision points and navigation paths
We mapped out the user flow to ensure that every tool, from mentorship to translation, was accessible from a single dashboard.
Reducing cognitive load and guiding personas
In the flow design, we prioritized a simple structure to reduce cognitive load and maintain consistent guidance from start to finish. We wanted to reduce the overwhelming nature of job searching by including all the essential tools in a single, accessible structure.
Pain point: Feeling overwhelmed navigating new job platforms and Canadian requirements.
Design solution: We included a single dashboard that anchors the whole experience. From here, users can perform key tasks directly without bouncing between multiple tools.
Result: This reduces cognitive load and newcomers have a clearer starting point.
Pain point: Struggling with language barriers and understanding job postings.
Design solution: The job parsing flow converts long job descriptions into structured sections with the option to translate.
Result: Users can quickly understand opportunities without feeling lost, empowering them to make decisions confidently even when English terms are unfamiliar.
Pain point: Lack of accessible mentorship and guidance in navigating an unfamiliar job market
Design solution: The mentorship flow is simple, users can book, view upcoming sessions and recommend mentors all in one screen.
Result: Newcomers like Sophia and Gonzalez receive efficient support without navigating a complex system.
Develop — Lofis
Creating low-fidelity wireframes to establish structure and core interactions
I led the low-fidelity wireframing process for both web and mobile, focusing on content hierarchy and simple, structured navigation.
The goal was to create a dashboard where users could view saved jobs, mentorship bookings, and resume feedback all in one place.
How early design decisions addressed newcomer needs
Needs
What was solved?
Benefit
Sophia: Needs mentorship to understand Canadian workplace norm
Mentor screen with upcoming appointment and recommended mentors related to field.
Provides immediate access to support and guidance, reduces the feeling of navigating the job market alone.
Gonzalez: Need for clearer occupational language and an easier way to understand jargon
Job posting parse with translation toggle and structured sections.
Alleviates intimidation and confusion, helps understand key information without external tools.
Both: Need a central hub to track progress and reduce the chaos of job searching
Unified dashboard showing saved jobs, upcoming mentor sessions, resume status, and intuitive navigation.
Encourages curiosity and provides visual inspiration for users who struggle with brainstorming when burnt out.
Develop — Hifis
Refining visuals and interactions to bring the final experience to life
With our style guide finalized and flows mapped out, we validated the structure through rapid team reviews. We checked each with our personas' pain points and goals. If a step didn't truly support users during the job search, it was revised or removed. We refined the visual design and interactions for both desktop and mobile experiences, maintaining consistency through our shared style guide.
Mobile
Web
Deliver — Results
Empowering newcomers through inclusive design
After a long straight 12+ hours of work, we were given the opportunity to present our pitch to a panel of judges consisting of professional product designers in the field. During the finals ceremony, we presented our pitch live to all participants and final round judges. And I'm proud to say that...
My team won first place! 🥇
This opportunity was such a great experience for me! As one of my first product design sprints, I learned a lot, especially when it comes to the design process and the amount of work that goes into designing a solution.
What I learned
Key takeaways
Strong style guides create efficient collaboration
By creating a style guide, it made collaborating on the project way easier and helped all of us to be on the same page when it came to designing Avenir. Overall, we worked more efficiently and finished our solution in the tight deadline
Research and competitive analysis prevent feature bloat
Competitive analysis was a key step in creating our final solution. It helped us to identify how we can make a more accessible and effective product with already existing features in other platforms, and improve on any pain points that these platforms have.
Next steps
Expanding outside Canada and to other countries
Currently, Avenir is only limited to those in Canada. It would be nice to add features to make it regional and help newcomers to other countries.
Good design bridges cultures. Great design builds belonging.
Thanks for checking out this case study! If you have any questions or want to know more, don't hesitate to contact me. While you're still here, please feel free to check out my other work or learn more about me. :)